Residents of California will soon be able to have a beagle doing a happy dance on their bumpers. The State of California, United Media, the Charles M. Schulz Museum and the California Association of Museums have teamed up to create this Snoopy license plate, with proceeds going toward supporting California museums. You can get more info, and California drivers can pre-register, at snoopyplate.com.

The Best Show on WFMU host Tom Scharpling welcomes Tales Designed to Thrizzle creator Michael Kupperman as a guest on tonight's show (along with Dave Willis and Dana Snyder of Aqua Teen Hunger Force), airing 8-11 PM Eastern time on 91.1 FM in New York and 90.1 FM in the Hudson Valley and streaming online at WFMU.org. Tune in for hilarity! We'll post a link to the archived audio when it's available.

• Review: "This extraordinary collection of World War I tales offers perhaps the finest work from the lauded Tardi. Each story, based on actual accounts from French soldiers, relates the often-horrific realities of trench-warfare. Disturbing yet compelling images abound: a dead, mangled horse hanging from a tree serves as a warning; rats feasting on corpses; amputations; executions; countless dead. Far more memorable are the impassioned stories themselves. Betrayal, deceit, mistrust, murder, hope, and even humor run throughout these tales. Painstakingly researched, the amazing Tardi perfectly captures the everyday despair of the World War I trench soldier. Visceral, powerful, and effective, the flawless It Was The War of the Trenches blazes a new standard for the war comic." – Rick Klaw, The SF Site: Nexus Graphica

• Review: "One of the nice things about the rise of highbrow comics is the how many genuinely lurid entertainments a gentleman can get away with adding to his library. For starters, we’d suggest Tim Lane’s Abandoned Cars. It’s the modern equivalent of the Raymond Chandler yarns that fill up the more exciting portion of your bookshelf — a string of police chases and back-alley fist fights with a surprisingly introspective thread running in the background." – Kempt

• Interview:Mr. Media's Bob Andelman talks to Gahan Wilson about Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons: ""I said, 'I'll see Mr. Kurtzman?' 'Oh, no,' the receptionist said. 'Trump is out of New York.' The art director came up behind me and said, 'Hef would like to see you.' I didn't know who or what a Hef was." Listen via the embedded player above or at this link, or download the MP3

This collection features over 120 pages of vintage Crumb comics starring the white-bearded, diminutive sage-cum-charlatan, ranging from charming, free-wheeling early '70s stories to the disturbing, controversial '90s stories (as seen in the Crumb movie), including the entire 40-page "Mr. Natural and Devil Girl" saga from Hup! (collected here for the first time in book form). Crumb's Mr. Natural is probably the most famous underground character of all (topping even Fritz the Cat and the Freak Brothers), recognizable even to "civilians." Don't miss this opportunity to snatch up this jam-packed collection of comics from one of the all-time masters, now available in hardcover for the very first time!

...and I may have posted this photo from Flickr user "Asimuth" of the appropriately-named Magpie using The Death of Speedy as a blanket when I first found it in 2007, but the current Flog archives don't go back that far, so here it is maybe again.

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